Department of Archaeology and Ancient History

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Infants of the Aegean Bronze Age

A study of intramural infant burials in their social context Sofia Sunnervik

BA thesis 15 credits in Classical archaeology and ancient history Spring term 2021 Supervisor: Erika Weiberg

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Abstract

Sunnervik, S. 2021. Infants of the Aegean Bronze Age. A study of intramural infant burials in their social context.

Sunnervik, S. 2021. Spädbarn under den egeiska bronsåldern. En studie av intramurala spädbarnsgravar och deras sociala kontext.

This thesis explores the phenomenon of intramural infant burial during Middle Helladic III–Late Helladic II during the Aegean Bronze Age. Intramural graves of children aged two years or less at Málthi and Ayios Stephanos, two settlements on the Greek mainland, are studied from a number of perspectives: the physical properties of the graves and the buried infants, the spatial and intramural context of the grave, and their relationship to their social and societal context.

Some things found to be relevant in the analysis were the importance of kinship and group belonging, as well as shifting funerary practices in a time of large-scale socio-economic change in the region.

Denna kandidatuppsats utforskar fenomenet intramurala spädbarnsgravar under Mellanhelladisk III–Senhelladisk II under den egeiska bronsåldern. Intramurala gravar av barn som var två år gamla eller yngre vid Málthi och Ayios Stephanos, två boplatser på det grekiska fastlandet, studeras ur ett antal perspektiv: gravarna och de begravda spädbarnens fysiska egenskaper, gravens rumsliga och intramurala kontext, och dess relation till dess sociala och samhälleliga kontext. Några ting som visade sig vara relevanta i analysen var vikten av släktskap och grupptillhörighet, såväl som föränderliga begravningsskick under en tid med storskaliga socioekonomiska förändringar i regionen.

Keywords: Intramural burial, infant burial, Aegean Bronze Age, social change, kinship

BA thesis in Classical archaeology and ancient history 15 hp. Supervisor: Erika Weiberg.

Defended and passed 2021-06-15.

Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden

Cover picture: A child by a grave. Original illustration by Therese Vildefall.

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Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Erika Weiberg for her incredible support during the writing of this thesis – without her help, I could not have managed finishing this project. I would also like to thank Michael Lindblom for providing invaluable information and help with the Málthi material. In addition, I want to thank my dear friends Isabella Jäger, for giving me fantastic feedback and being such a great discussion partner, and Therese Vildefall for creating the beautiful cover picture for this thesis and for cheering me on.

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The occurrence of intramural child burials – children being buried within settlements and buildings, often inside walls or under floors – is attested in a range of cultures and time periods, including several prehistoric societies in south-eastern Europe and the Near East.¹ Many graves of this kind have also been discovered in Greece dating to the Aegean Bronze Age.² The question of why children were buried in this manner (and why it has become a cross-cultural phenomenon frequently appearing over time) is a fascinating topic. This text will delve into some examples of intramural child burials from Bronze Age Greece and the societies they are derived from, in an attempt to bring some new perspectives to the funerary practice.

The end of the Middle Bronze Age and the start of the Late Bronze Age was a time of change on the Greek mainland. It marked the beginning of the so-called ‘Mycenaean period’, in which many societies were transformed from smaller, local villages or towns into larger regional administrative centres. Political power and authority became more centralised and hierarchal, which can be seen especially clearly in the mortuary record, in new forms of monumental funerary architecture and the material wealth displayed as grave goods.

1.2. Aim and research questions

The purpose of this thesis is to explore intramural burials of small children (aged ≤ two years) from the Aegean Bronze Age, and to attempt to relate them to their social context. Through studying the burial practice at two different locations on the Greek mainland during Middle Helladic III–Late Helladic II (MH III–LH II, Table 1), the aim is to examine this specific funerary practice within its societal context. As MH III–LH II was a time period when considerable societal change occurred, both life and death in Greek Bronze Age societies was changing, but intramural child burials remain present. In order to examine these, examples from archaeological sites at Málthi and Ayios Stephanos will be studied.

The research questions in this thesis are:

• What do intramural infant burials from Middle Helladic III–Late Helladic II look like?

• How are the burials similar or different when comparing the two case-studies, in terms of grave types, grave goods, location and osteological information? Can any patterns be discerned?

• How can these intramural burials be related to their specific social context, and how do they compare to other non-intramural burials of infants/children?

• How can these intramural burials be related to socio-economic organisation and societal change during MH III–LH II?

Studying burials and funerary practices can potentially identify patterns (or discrepancies) in the treatment of the dead, which in turn can be interpreted as signifiers of social change.³ In examining intramural child burials dating from a time when considerable societal change occurred, it might be possible to discover new knowledge of what role these children and their

1 Crawford 2008, 197; Mishina 2008, 137.

2 McGeorge 2011, 1–2.

3 Galankis 2020, 350.

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burials held in society.

In addition, many archaeological studies of children tend to focus on only one specific aspect of the child, usually either their physical remains or their social role and identity in society. The theoretical approach of this thesis – which is outlined further in 1.3 – is that social identities and societal roles are too complex to be treated in this manner, and that it cannot be separated into different parts. Therefore, in order to answer the research questions in the best way possible, this thesis strives to include all relevant and available data on the studied burials, not just the physical remains, and not just any social inferences made about the children.

Table 1. Absolute chronology and abbreviations (used henceforth) of the time periods studied in this text (all years B.C.E.).⁴

Middle Helladic III (MH III) 1800–1700

Late Helladic I (LH I) 1700/1675–1635/00

Late Helladic IIA (LH IIA) 1635/00–1480/70 Late Helladic IIB (LH IIB) 1480/70–1420/10

1.3. Theoretical approach

The ‘biological’ and the ‘social’ child are often treated as wholly separate entities, with children in funerary contexts usually being studied only osteologically or from sociocultural perspectives.⁵ As personal and social identity is a complex and intersectional concept that cannot be divided into separate sections or separated from the physical body,⁶ it should not be studied as such. Human behaviour and culture are diverse and multifaceted. Anne Ingvarsson- Sundström, in her study of remains of Middle Helladic children, argues that biological and cultural factors are interwoven and that they therefore should not be treated separately. She compares childhood to gender: “[...]in the same way as gender roles are cultural constructions but often connected to biological sex, the concept of a child is culturally constructed but connected to physiological age, although not determined by it.”⁷ Moreover, the materiality of the physical body and its relation to social life can shift, which is shown clearly in the sometimes complicated matter of defining age (see further discussion on age terms below in 1.4).⁸

Mike Parker Pearson points out three “major assumptions” that are generally applied when deriving social information from burials.⁹ To begin with, the buried individual is given representations of social identity and role(s), which are given material form in the grave, such as grave goods and the location of the burial. These expressions of social identities and roles through material culture can in a next step be compared between individuals. Lastly, any patterns that are found as a result can be used to differentiate roles within the society studied, in order to reconstruct it. As will be demonstrated, the outline of this thesis largely follows the procedure described by Parker Pearson (see 1.4). This can also be related to the research questions of the thesis: possible representations of social identity within the studied burials will be examined and compared (research questions one and two) and related to the social context of their time (research questions three and four).

4 Manning 2010, 23–24; Voutsaki 2010, 101.

5 Halcrow & Tayles 2008, 191 & 209.

6 Insoll 2007, 6; Lally & Ardren 2008, 72–73.

7 Ingvarsson-Sundström 2003, 20.

8 Sofaer 2011, 302.

9 Parker Person 1982, 99–100.

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1.4. Methodology and material

If an archaeologist strives to record variations in human behaviour and culture, the methodological approach used needs to be adapted in order to be able to include all relevant information. Especially if the aim of the study is to analyse archaeological phenomena in their own specific context, focusing on isolated aspects of the material could potentially turn out misleading. Studying human remains within their funerary context should therefore endeavour to be just that – a holistic study of not just osteological remains or grave goods, but rather of all information that is relevant and available. The scope of an archaeological study is inevitably determined by a number of factors such as available resources and source materials, but whenever possible, applying a multifaceted approach can potentially provide more nuanced information and new knowledge. Funerary assemblages and human remains can for instance be analysed together with studies of the physical and environmental surroundings, ethnoarchaeological studies or any other sources deemed relevant.

To begin with, two important definitions need to be made, in order to properly present the methodology and material used in this thesis. This concerns the terms ‘infant’ and ‘intramural’.

Both terms have occasionally been used to describe different things, and so it is important to describe clearly how the terms are used in the present study, as this might differ from the how the terms are used in other texts.

As noted by Siân Halcrow and Nancy Tayles in their critical examination of bioarchaeological investigations of children, several different terms describing age (such as

‘subadult’ and ‘infant’) have been used interchangeably in past literature.¹⁰ To confuse things further, the same age term can mean different things depending on the field of research it is used within, such as bioarchaeology, medical anthropology, or clinical paediatrics.¹¹ For convenience, the term ‘infant’ will be used broadly in this thesis to include all studied individuals, ranging from foetuses up to two years of age, unless otherwise specified. This is a wider range than what most definitions include – infancy is most commonly defined as the age range from birth up to one year¹² – but it is more specific than other terms that apply to the entire group, such as ‘young children’. Other age terms will be used occasionally to refer to specific individuals or smaller groups of individuals and defined then as needed.

The term ‘intramural’ in connection to burials usually refers to a burial being connected to domestic or residential architecture both spatially and chronologically – that is, the burial is placed within or close to the living space while it was used for habitation.¹³ However, the spatial extent which ‘intramural’ has been used to describe differs; sometimes it refers to a location within an entire settlement, sometimes only within the walls of a house.¹⁴ The matter of time can also be debated. If an interment was made within a house while it was occupied by people, it can be assumed to have a different impact on the individuals living there than a burial made in a house that is no longer used for habitation. The term ‘intramural’ will be used here to apply to burials within a settlement, and not necessarily within a house. However, as will be shown, many of the studies graves have been located within houses or next to walls. The matter of the burials being contemporary with habitation can be very difficult to answer based on archaeological evidence, and will be discussed further along in the text.

To answer the research questions of this thesis, intramural infant graves from two sites, Málthi and Ayios Stephanos, will be studied (Fig. 1). A total of 34 graves and two groups of commingled remains, containing 50 or 51 individuals, is included in the material. The site of Málthi is a fortified settlement on a hilltop in northern Messenia.¹⁵ It was first excavated in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and then again in 2015–2017.¹⁶ The settlement dates from MH III to LH

10 Halcrow & Tayles 2008, 192–197.

11 Halcrow & Tayles 2008, 194–196.

12 Halcrow & Tayles 2008, 195.

13 Kostanti 2017, 108.

14 Laneri 2011, 44.

15 Worsham, Lindblom & Zikidi 2018, 7–8.

16 Valmin 1938; Worsham, Lindblom & Zikidi 2018.

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II¹⁷, and all the studied graves – 19 graves and two groups of commingled remains, containing 35 or 36 individuals – are located inside the fortification walls of the settlements, with most of them being located inside buildings. The site of Ayios Stephanos is also a settlement on a hilltop, in Laconia roughly 45 km SSE of Sparta.¹⁸ It was excavated in 1959–1963 and in 1973–1977.¹⁹ The settlement was used continuously from EH until its abandonment by mid-LH IIIC and during excavation a large number of graves within the settlement have been discovered.²⁰ 15 graves, all single graves totalling 15 individuals, have been selected for study here.

The two sites are similar in some ways; they are both hilltop settlements of roughly the same size, share some similarities in architectural layout and are not particularly far from each other geographically. However, unlike Ayios Stephanos, the Málthi settlement is surrounded by a fortification wall. Ayios Stephanos offers evidence of a considerably

longer continuous use of the site for habitation (from EH I to LH IIIC²¹) than Málthi (from MH II to LH IIIA²²) and was significantly closer to the sea both during the Bronze Age and in modern time. The choice of these two sites for study was made as they can be deemed representative sites with relatively large numbers of intramural infant burials dating from a time of significant social and societal change (i.e., MH III–LH II).

A number of aspects of the graves have been studied which can be divided into three categories: 1) the graves themselves, 2) their spatial intramural contexts, and 3) the physical remains of the buried individuals. The first category includes the grave type (i.e., what kind of grave structure it is), how many interments the grave has, and any grave goods that were found.

The second category, the spatial intramural context of the graves, examines the spatial context of a grave. This includes its location within the settlement and its physical surroundings that makes the grave an intramural one, whether it might be inside a house or in another intramural setting. Whenever it has been possible to discern if the area surrounding the grave was in use at the time of the burial or not, this information has been included as well. The third category looks at the physical remains of the infants, and what information has been collected through osteological study. This primarily concerns aging, body position and orientation, and if the remains show any signs of trauma or illness. All of the information collected about the burials can be found in the appendix (chapter 8).

Regarding the skeletal remains, some notes on the selection of the studied data need to be made. Firstly, the subadult individuals (i.e., the ones who were not fully grown adults) found at the Málthi site have rarely been aged particularly specifically. Most were only studied briefly without any expertise during the first excavations, resulting in many individuals being aged vaguely and broadly, which was complicated further by the preservation of the remains being very poor. For this reason, many further remains excavated at Málthi may have been relevant

17 Michael Lindblom, personal communication (2021-05-13).

18 Taylour 1972, 205.

19 Taylour 1972, 2–4.

20 Janko 2008, 602.

21 Janko 2008, 557 & 602.

22 Worsham, Lindblom & Zikidi 2018, 7.

Figure 1. Map of mainland Greece, showing the studied sites.

Modified from Corinth Archaeological Data and Basemaps provided by American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

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5 for this study, but they have not been included in the material. The individuals included here are only the ones who have been explicitly aged as two years or younger, described as ‘infants’

in a further study of the excavation reports²³ or in one case, a single individual who was very visibly an infant as seen in drawings²⁴ from the report of the first excavations. Secondly, biological sex has not been included in this study. While some of the studied individuals from Ayios Stephanos have been sexed anthropologically, that data will not be used, as sexing of individuals so young is generally viewed as unreliable by modern osteological standards.²⁵

For clarity, the disposition of this thesis follows the same order as the research questions presented earlier. In chapter three, the grave material is presented with a focus on the first and second research questions. In chapter four and five, an analysis of the social and societal context – the third and fourth research questions respectively – is presented and followed up with a concluding discussion of the results of the study.

23 Boyd 2002.

24 Valmin 1938, fig. 33.

25 Bisel 2008, CD-150.

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2. Previous research

Evidence of intramural burial of children has been found in a number of cultures, especially prehistoric ones of south-eastern Europe and the Near East. Intramural burials in general have received a reasonable amount of scholarly attention, including two recent and comprehensive volumes on the topic.²⁶ Intramural burials of children specifically has been traced back to the 10^th millennium B.C.E. and Photini McGeorge, in a survey of Aegean intramural infant burials, has argued for the spread of the custom from northern Syria and Mesopotamia and south-eastern Anatolia along the Tigris and Euphrates.²⁷ Differential mortuary treatment of infants and small children, not only in intramural manners of burial but in other ways too, is generally well-documented in both archaeological and ethnographical studies.²⁸ Tatiana Mishina, writing about intramural infant burials of Bronze Age Bulgaria in Babies reborn – a volume on infant and child burials in pre- and protohistory, many of them being intramural examples – argues that the widespread occurrences of intramural infant burials “points to the fundamental nature of this archetype” and that infant burials therefore need to be treated separately from other age groups.²⁹

William Cavanagh and Christopher Mee³⁰ have provided an extensive catalogue of prehistoric burials from all periods on the Greek mainland, including both extramural and intramural burials. Some other studies of intramural burials include comprehensive publications of Greek Bronze Age mortuary practices by Sofia Voutsaki, Eleni Milka, Michael Boyd, Gullög Nordquist, Elizabeth Blackburn, among others.³¹ Generally, these scholars have not focused on intramural burials per se, but they often make up a large portion of the studied material; some commonly occurring themes are differentiation in social status through mortuary display, funerary rituals/ceremonies, and socio-political structures.

Traditionally, the Middle Helladic period has been viewed as a time which was less complex socially, or even ‘poorer’ than both the Early and especially the Late Helladic period.³² While more recent studies have shown more variation and complexity in social organization and especially mortuary practices than was previously known³³, the Middle Helladic was still a time with fewer and smaller settlements, less material wealth, and less social stratification than what can be seen in the subsequent Late Helladic.³⁴ Several studies have explored the extensive transformations through which the small-scale MH societies developed into the palatial economies of the Mycenaean period with its palaces.³⁵ Large collective tombs filled with riches were built, political organization changed completely, and extensive trade with other parts of the Aegean and beyond had significant effects on both the wealth of individuals and the economy as a whole.³⁶

26 Bacvarov 2008; Henry 2011.

27 McGeorge 2011, 1–9.

29 Mishina 2008, 145. Emphasis mine.

30 Cavanagh & Mee 1998.

31 E.g., Blackburn 1970; Boyd 2002; Milka 2019; Nordquist 1987; Voutsaki 1998; Voutsaki 2005.

32 Sarri 2016, 117.

33 Philippa-Touchais et al. 2010.

34 Papadimitriou 2016, 335; Sarri 2016, 117.

35 Boyd 2002; Milka 2019; Nordquist 1987; Philippa-Touchais et al. 2010; Voutsaki 2005; Wiersma 2014;

Wiersma & Voutsaki 2017.

36 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 41 & 134; Maran & Wright 2020, 102–104; Milka 2019, 18; Voutsaki 2010, 101;

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3. The intramural graves

This chapter contains an analysis following the three categories of evidence outlined in 1.4: the graves themselves, their spatial intramural contexts, and the physical remains of the buried infants. Continuous comparisons between the two locations are made in order to answer the first two research questions, regarding what the intramural infant burials studied look like, how they are similar or different, and if any patterns can be discerned. These questions focus on the archaeological context of the burials, such as different grave types, the prevalence of grave goods, intramural grave locations and osteological information derived from the physical remains of the buried infants.

Examples of intramural burials of infants and small children in Greece can be found from the Neolithic onward, especially during the Aceramic and the Early Neolithic, and appear continuously throughout the Bronze Age, with the custom even existing in modern times in some places.³⁷ During the Middle Helladic, intramural burial has been shown to be very common not just for infants or children but for all members of society. In their extensive survey of prehistoric burial practices in Greece, Cavanagh and Mee include 1176 MH tombs except for the (in many ways exceptional) Grave Circle B at Mycenae; 825 were found to be intramural, which amounts to approximately 70 %.³⁸ Asine and Lerna are two sites on the Greek mainland that have been extensively studied and published, including many Middle Helladic intramural graves and their remains.³⁹ At Asine, 62 % of skeletons found in intramural graves were children, as opposed to 31 % in extramural graves.⁴⁰ Generally, pits and cists as well as occasional pithoi are used for the burials, as well as smaller jars for infants.⁴¹ In addition to Asine and Lerna, Málthi and Ayios Stephanos – the sites studied in this thesis – have been described as sites with exceptional numbers of intramural graves, although neither of the settlements have been published and researched to quite the same extent as Asine and Lerna.⁴² The sites have also been described as showing strong evidence of continuing to bury infants and small children in intramural settings, even during the Late Helladic when the majority of burials usually occurred extramurally.⁴³ Seeing as sites such as Asine and Lerna have already been studied and published in such detail, including them in the material studied here might not shed light on much new information. Instead Málthi and Ayios Stephanos, being less thoroughly studied sites from the perspectives presented here, are more likely to provide new knowledge on the topic.

Wiersma 2014, 5–12.

37 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 128; Ingvarsson-Sundström 2003, 139.

38 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 26.

39 E.g., Nordquist 1987 (Asine); Ingvarsson-Sundström 2003 (Asine & Lerna); Milka 2019 (Asine & Lerna).

40 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 129; Nordquist 1987, 102.

41 Voutsaki 2010, 103–104.

42 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 41; McGeorge 2011, 3.

43 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 41; Kostanti 2017, 109–111.

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3.1. The graves

The graves from Málthi and Ayios Stephanos can be categorised into four broader types: pit graves, cist tombs, pithos burials and groups of commingled remains. Pit graves, the most common type, is a pit dug into the place of burial (usually the floor/ground or a wall) in which the body of the deceased is placed. Seven of the pit graves at Málthi had what has been described as a “stone outline”,⁴⁴ that is, the walls of the pit had been lined with stone slabs. In addition, one of them also had a stone slab covering the pit. Cist tombs are graves constructed with stone slabs to create a cist; thus, the distinction between what constitutes a true ‘cist’ and a pit grave lined with stone slabs is not always clear.⁴⁵ The terminology used here for each grave is the same as in the original publications. Pithos burials, of which one each was found at both sites, constitutes burials where the remains were placed in pithos storage jars. The groups of commingled remains, discovered only at Málthi, were both found scattered across floors within houses. This could be a result of either remains being placed on the floor, or buried in shallow graves which were later disturbed, bringing the skeletal remains further up in the stratigraphy.

As shown in Figure 2, roughly half of the graves studied were pit graves (17 of 36, 47.2

%). An additional 41.7 % (15 of 36) were cist tombs, making pit graves and cist tombs the two most common (32 of 36, 88.9 %) grave types in the material. This reflects the general distribution of grave types of the Middle Helladic, in which pit graves and cist tombs are among the most common grave types throughout mainland Greece, not only for burials that are intramural and/or of children.⁴⁶ Cavanagh and Mee also note a preference for pit graves for children during the Middle Helladic.⁴⁷ No particular preferences for grave type in relation to dating, the number of individuals buried, or the presence of grave goods could be found in the material, but cist tombs appear to be somewhat more common for the older children in the studied group. Almost half of the individuals buried in cists were twelve months or older (8 of

44 Valmin 1938, 195.

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Pit graves Cist graves Pithos burials Groups of commingled

remains Málthi Ayios Stephanos

Figure 2. Graph showing the distribution of grave types (n=36) at Málthi (21 graves) and Ayios Stephanos (15 graves).

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9 18, 44.44 %), and only three (16.67 %) were of foetal age (for an explanation of the age divisions within the material, see 3.3).

A majority of the graves studied were single graves (26 of 36, 72.2 %). When combining this information with the distribution of grave goods and age, a pattern can be discerned: most burials containing grave goods (7 of 9, 77.8 %) and infants twelve months or older (6 of 12, 50

%) are also single graves. In other words, there is a slight tendency for infants aged twelve months or older to be buried in single graves that generally require a greater effort to build (compare a built cist to a ‘simple’ pit grave), and to also receive grave goods. Interestingly enough, the youngest children studied here (foetuses) are also found exclusively in single graves, whereas the division between single and multiple interments is fairly evenly spread within the other age groups (Fig. 3).

Only nine of the graves contained grave goods: five graves had pottery of some kind, while the remaining four contained different small finds. Beginning with the pottery, one pit at Málthi (M12) containing three or four infants also contained fragments of a small goblet of hard-baked bluish ware and a grey Minyan vase. An infant buried in a stone-lined pit within a wall, also at Málthi (M1), was buried together with a vessel of the kind referred to as a ‘feeding bottle’ to the right of the head. At Ayios Stephanos, a “make-shift cist”⁴⁸ created from already existing stones in LH I–IIB containing a foetus (AS4), was covered with no less than 44 broken pithos fragments. An LH IIA cist tomb, also at Ayios Stephanos (AS15), was the only grave studied to show any evidence of funerary ceremonies. It was covered with a “roof” of large stones that were seemingly put there to support a cairn; the stones were mistaken for tumble during the excavation and removed. Under the removed stones an amphora and a cooking jug were discovered, which were presumed to have been deposited during some sort of funerary ceremony.⁴⁹ Last but not least, a cist with a cover slab containing two infants at Málthi (M10) had cups placed in all corners of the tomb, in addition to a unique double jug on the right side of one of the infant’s legs. This jug is unique because no exact parallel of it has been found.

The pots appear to have been placed or moved around at the time of the second interment (the

48 Taylour & Janko 2008, 127.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Foetus 0-6 months 6-12 months "Infant" 12+ months

Single grave 2 interments 3+ interments

Figure 3. Graph showing the distribution within the studied age groups of the number of interments (n=50) within each grave.

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two infants were seemingly not buried at the same time), based on their positions in the corners away from the skeletal remains. This grave is the most richly furnished of all the studied graves;

in addition to the pottery, it also held three agate beads and a drop-shaped object made from the stem of a seashell next to one of the infants’ neck. They were presumed to be the remains of a necklace.

Moving to the graves containing grave goods that were not pottery, another grave, this one from MH III–LH I at Ayios Stephanos (AS1), also contained a bead. A single carnelian bead was found in the region of the chest on the infant buried there. One infant buried in a cist tomb at Málthi (M3) was buried with a ‘sword pommel’ made of ivory to the right of the head.

Finally, two graves contained animal bones: an LH I pit grave at Ayios Stephanos (AS11) contained sheep or goat bones which had been cracked for marrow extraction. During excavation of the grave of a foetus or newborn at Málthi (M19), buried in a pit grave in a floor, a single female pig canine was discovered very near the skull of the child.

3.2. The spatial context of the graves

Figure 4 illustrates the distribution of the different kinds of grave locations found within the studied material. The most common location is in floors inside buildings (15 of 36, 41.7 %).

This category also includes the two groups of commingled remains discovered in Málthi;

whether the remains were placed on the floor or in shallow graves was not possible to determine at the time of excavation. Some graves were built inside of or below walls (5 of 36, 13.9 %);

the pithos burial excavated at Ayios Stephanos (AS14), dated to LH II, was discovered resting on top of a wall that went out of use in early LH IIA. Five burials (out of 36, 13.9 %) were made in outdoor settings. All of them were built using already existing architectural elements, most often up against or between walls, almost creating a cist of sorts.

An additional twelve graves (out of 36, 33.3 %) have been categorised as ‘unclear’. This is due to the excavation reports not specifying the spatial context surrounding the grave clearly enough to confidently place it in one of the other categories. However, they are all from definitely intramural settings; for instance, most of the burials in this category have been made

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Inside of/below/on top of walls

In floors inside buildings Outdoors in proximity to buildings/walls

Unclear

Málthi Ayios Stephanos

Figure 4. Graph showing the distribution of grave locations within the study material (n=36).

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11 right next to walls, but it is not clear if the grave is inside or outside of a building. This is occasionally due to the description of the spatial context being too vague, but in some cases also due to a lack of recorded evidence.⁵⁰

Not enough evidence has been recorded at Málthi to determine if occupation of a room continued after a burial was made in it. The sample of all burials excavated at the site and the large number of children that it contains is disproportionate to the size of the settlement – the children greatly outnumber the adults.⁵¹ It is suspected, in part because of the single extramural adult grave found, that further adult burials lay undiscovered outside the akropolis.⁵² If so, this would mean that intramural burial was perhaps not the most common form of burial for the population as a whole, but rather that children were more likely than adults to receive it. In his study of the burials from Málthi, Boyd notes that many of the graves that have been reused are particularly visible in the domestic architecture (such as cists and pits with stone outlines), and that their visibility is the main reason for their reuse for new inhumations.⁵³ The osteological information and associated stratigraphical information recorded from two rooms at Málthi (containing grave M3 and the groups of commingled remains) during the later excavations indicate that the rooms were used for primary inhumations of infants. It is possible that the intensive use of the rooms for burials, in combination with their position near the settlement’s fortification wall, led to constant disturbance of the primary burials.⁵⁴

At Ayios Stephanos, determining whether burials were contemporary with habitation or not also turned out to be a very difficult assessment. Most of the burials from the site studied in this thesis were found in areas of the excavations that had a stratigraphy much too complex to provide any definitive evidence of that kind.⁵⁵ However Boyd, studying the graves of Ayios Stephanos as well, notes that most MH–LH II burials at the site were located in parts of the settlement not inhabited at the time of the burials – but they had been inhabited not long in the past before. This would mean that the people burying their dead must have been aware of the area’s not-so-distant past, especially when constructing the graves, as remains of past habitation would have been located just beneath the ground.⁵⁶ Boyd also argues for intramural burial being a more normative or even standard practice as Ayios Stephanos, as the division of adults and children buried intramurally is much more even in comparison to Málthi.⁵⁷ At Málthi intramural infant burials were possibly restricted chronologically (that is, the mode of burial might only have been used during a specific time interval at the settlement), but examples from most of the Bronze Age at Ayios Stephanos implies that was not the case there.⁵⁸

The general interpretation of the intramural burial practices at Ayios Stephanos is that the hilltop was disused for occupation in LH I, and was from then on instead used as an intramural cemetery. This reflects similar practices at other contemporary sites, such as Asine.⁵⁹ A possible reason that may have contributed to the extent of intramural burial practices is the lack of deep soil in the area⁶⁰; practical convenience seems to have played a role in other ways as well. The burials AS6 and AS9, found close to several other child burials not included in this data, were made in an open space that was used as a courtyard in LH IIIA1 which was seemingly viewed as a convenient space for burying infants.⁶¹

50 Taylour 1972, 221.

51 Boyd 2002, 33.

52 Boyd 2002, 34.

53 Boyd 2002, 34.

54 Zikidi 2017, 5–6.

56 Boyd 2002, 34–35; Milka 2019, 583–584.

57 Boyd 2002, 35.

58 Janko 2008, 564.

59 Janko 2008, 567; Taylour & Janko 2008, 141.

60 Janko 2008, 564.

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3.3. Osteological information

The remains studied in this material have been divided into five age categories, as demonstrated above: foetus, 0–6 months, 6–12 months, “infant” and ≥ 12 months. The first category includes individuals deemed to be of foetal age and perinates or neonates; ‘perinate’ refers to the time around birth, usually defined as the time from 24 weeks gestation to seven postnatal days.

‘Neonate’ refers to the day of birth up to 28 days after.⁶² The category “infant” includes all individuals which have been described using that specific term in the excavation reports but have not been aged more specifically. Unfortunately, the publications do not offer any definitions of how the term ‘infant’ has been used when describing the skeletal remains. This category consists of a relatively large portion of the material (Fig. 5), especially at Málthi; had more specific aging been made, the division between the age groups would presumably had been more evenly spread out.

In an examination of child mortality rates, the excavators of Ayios Stephanos note that the entire sample of all burials from the site is dominated by infants to a larger extent than both other similar contemporary samples and modern samples from undeveloped countries.⁶³ If the sample from Ayios Stephanos can be deemed representative of its actual mortality rates, this would imply that the settlement suffered a higher prevalence of child mortality than what might be expected of a sample from the Aegean Bronze Age.⁶⁴

When examining the variation in body orientation within the studied material, no particular patterns were found. E-W was the most common orientation (9 of 50, 18 %), but many graves also lacked any recorded information (13 of 50, 26 %), most often due to the skeletal remains being too decayed or disturbed to provide any evidence. An examination of body positions, however, showed a preference for placing the deceased in an extended position (17 of 50, 34

%). The most common position to place the body in during the Middle Helladic was contracted or flexed;⁶⁵ in the Early Mycenaean period (i.e., end of Middle Helladic and beginning of Late

63 Duhig et al. 2008, 492.

64 cf. Scott 1999, 90.

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Foetus 0-6 months 6-12 months "Infant" ≥ 12 months

Málthi Ayios Stephanos

Figure 5. Graph showing the distribution of age groups within the study material (n=50).

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13 Helladic) both contracted and extended burials can be found.⁶⁶ It is noteworthy that roughly half of all the studied individuals (26 of 50, 52 %) showed no definitive evidence of what position the body was placed in; the most common reasons for this were disturbance of the burial and poor preservation, resulting in incomplete skeletons.

In most individuals that were examined for signs of trauma or illness during excavations (all individuals from Ayios Stephanos and individuals in graves M3 and M17–M20 from Málthi), no such indications were found. This does not necessarily mean that the infants had not suffered trauma or illness; as a result of the nature of bone remodelling, evidence of that kind can be very difficult to discern in subadult skeletal remains.⁶⁷ However, one exception can be found in the material. An infant excavated in one of the groups of commingled remains at Málthi (M20), estimated to be 0–6 months old, had a 4 mm lesion in their temporal bone directly above the external auditory meatus (ear canal). This is an indicator of acute otitis media, an inflammation of the middle ear, which is usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection.

Neonates that present this pathology usually also present irritability, fever and trouble feeding;

this makes it a possible cause of death for the infant.⁶⁸

Some additional notes can be made on the osteological information provided by the material. One infant at Ayios Stephanos (AS12), estimated to be 7–9 foetal months, had “a piece of red substance [that] was attached to the skull”.⁶⁹ No further description or explanation for this is given, and so it is unclear what this substance is and where it came from. An interesting note was also made on one of the groups of commingled remains at Málthi (M21).

The bones excavated were described as having very poor surface preservation, such as weathering and discoloration. This implies that the skeletal remains were exposed to post- depositional factors such as sunlight and animal gnawing – which in turn implies that they must have been buried very shallowly, or perhaps even placed upon the floor instead of within graves.

68 Zikidi 2017, 5–7.

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4. The social context of intramural infant burials

This chapter examines the social context of the burials from several perspectives in regard to the third research question, namely how the burials can be related to their specific social context.

Firstly, some arguments for the domestic nature of intramural infant graves are presented and how they can be related to notions of kinship. Secondly, some reflections are made about the emotions and religious beliefs that might have affected the burial practices for infants.

4.1. Kinship and the domestic household

In her reflections on Middle Helladic burial practices in the Argolid, Nordquist notes that in smaller settlements (of perhaps a few hundred inhabitants) “[...] individuality can be suggested to be typical for small-scale societies, whereas larger-scale societies tend instead to express the individual’s belonging to a certain group.”⁷⁰ In other words, burials within societies of the kind typically seen during the Middle Helladic can be expected to display signs of individuality to a greater extent than in larger societies or settlements, where the focus instead shifts to the buried individual’s belonging or membership within a group. Additionally, many scholars have argued for the interpretation of Middle Helladic societies as kinship-based ones; social organization was largely defined by and structured around groups of kin, where authority and a sense of belonging was associated with one’s family and ancestry.⁷¹ The division between individuality and group membership described above, then, can in this view of Middle Helladic societies be seen as a division between kinship and the entire community. Individuality and personal identity were connected with the smaller kinship group, perhaps even as small as a nuclear family and its direct ancestors, as opposed to the larger group consisting of everyone within the community or the settlement. This could certainly influence the choice of burial location within or in the close vicinity of the house or houses that belong to that kinship group – it creates a strong spatial, visible connection between the buried individual and the group. This spatial closeness could then serve as an indicator of authority or social belonging, rather than material wealth or funerary architecture, which seems to have played a more important role in the Late Helladic period.

Kinship relations can of course change throughout a person’s life – they do not necessarily have to be created by direct descent or ancestry but could for instance be created by other strong connections, such as marriage.⁷² However, that is unlikely to be particularly relevant for the infants studied here, who all died at a very young age. Any kin relations displayed in the burials studied in this material are more likely to be related to the nuclear family; it is theoretically very possible that some of the burials in the material with more than one infant (e.g., M5, M8, M9) contain siblings, although it is impossible to know without ancient DNA analysis. At Málthi, excavators have argued for a similar interpretation of at least one group of burials at the site, two rooms containing (among other graves) burials M3 and M20.⁷³

During the later part of the MH III–LH II period, as explained in 3.2, a portion of the Ayios Stephanos settlement was abandoned for habitation and was instead used as an intramural

70 Nordquist 1990, 38.

71 E.g.., Cavanagh & Mee 1998; Milka 2019; Nordquist 1987; Voutsaki 2005; Wiersma 2014.

72 Milka 2019, 13.

73 Worsham, Lindblom & Zikidi 2018, 20.

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15 cemetery. The amount of time between habitational use and burial use of the area was short – perhaps it was still known what kin groups had direct connection to which abandoned houses.

If so, the strong spatial connection between the buried infant and its direct ancestors could still be upheld. Even if that kind of knowledge had been lost, it must have been obvious to the people burying their dead that this was a place where their ancestors had lived, and so it could still provide evidence of that ancestral relationship.

In addition to the kinship group, another important social function can be connected to the house – the household itself. Ingvarsson-Sundström maintains that plenty of domestic chores and work in a typical Middle Helladic household could have been and probably was done by children, as has been the case in many other pre-industrial societies.⁷⁴ This is important because it provides children with a more active, participating role in social life than what is perhaps more generally described when looking at the archaeological past. Helping to provide food, making and repairing household items, watching or ‘babysitting’ younger children – all of these are important functions of the household that children would be able to contribute to, at least to some extent, from a fairly young age. Especially in a society that values family groups highly in its social structures, contributing to the support of the family’s daily upkeep may very well be deemed important, not just for sustenance but for a person’s identity and social role. While the infants studied in this thesis were all too young to be particularly independent, if at all – a child of only a few months is completely dependent on others for care and survival – children in general might have held a more domestic role than adults. This would only strengthen the intramurally buried child’s connection to the house, as it not only belongs with the kinship group or family of the house but is also placed both literally and figuratively in the household.

These interpretations convey an impression of emotional, familial connections or some sort of ‘together-ness’. These infants may have received differential burial on emotional and symbolical grounds, rather than being of lower status than adults, as has sometimes been suggested.⁷⁵ The domestic sphere might have been viewed as a highly appropriate place to bury a dead child, not only because it is a physical place the child has a reasonably strong connection to, but also because they are kept emotionally close to the family that way. As Katerina Kostanti puts it, burying a child within the household can be “the attainment of the most profound commemoration by allowing the deceased to continue to ‘coexist’ spatially and in a sense

‘participate’ in family and communal life.”⁷⁶

4.2. Emotions and religious beliefs

Occasionally, the matter of grief is touched upon when discussing the deaths of children in societies with very high infant and child mortality. It has indeed been shown that the high likelihood of one’s children dying, as well as difficult social circumstances, can have an effect on parents’ emotions regarding the death of a child⁷⁷ – but any ‘amount’ of grief, no matter its extent, is difficult to provide evidence for in an archaeological context. While one might argue that differential burial for infants, a lack of grave goods, simplicity of the grave, etcetera, is evidence of lesser emotional investment in a deceased infant, it cannot be known with any certainty that this is the case. It could just as well be argued that their burial within the domestic sphere is an indication of the opposite. Possible remnants of funerary ceremonies, such as the pots in grave AS15, can also indicate this. Other burial practices or manifestations of grief through material culture might be lost to us, or they are visible, but are not interpreted as signs of grief or emotional loss. Examples of ‘miniature’ objects made specifically for children have been found in Middle Helladic graves at Lerna.⁷⁸ These types of objects can be interpreted as

75 McGeorge 2011, 11.

76 Kostanti 2017, 119.

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16

having a somewhat more emotional value to them than ‘full-size’ equivalents given as grave gifts to adults. A single object which this interpretation might be applied to can be found in the study material: the feeding bottle found in grave M1, placed at the head of the infant who died at the age of just a few months (it also provided the model for the feeding bottle illustrated in the cover picture of this thesis).

Some have suggested that infant burials, and especially those in jars, were made intramurally in order to bring fertility to the household in the form of a new, healthy child being born.⁷⁹ In this belief, the jar would symbolise the womb, functioning as a vessel to help nourish a new life into the family. This theory, like many other ideas of religious beliefs in the past, is difficult to prove without any other archaeological evidence. In the grave material from Málthi and Ayios Stephanos, two pithos burials (M13 and AS14) are included, but the pithoi are not as small as the jars usually presented in relation to this theory. However, the transformative changes in mortuary practices taking place in the beginning of the Late Helladic are certainly indicative of some kind of change in religious beliefs as well. It is reasonable to assume that large-scale changes in the treatment of the dead would have to be acceptable from a religious point of view, even if the changes made did not originate from a religious standpoint at all.

79 Kostanti 2017, 118 – 119; McGeorge 2011, 12.

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5. The societal context of intramural infant burials

This chapter discusses some aspects of the fourth and final research question, regarding how the intramural burials in the study material can be related to the socio-economic organization of their time, a period of many societal changes. The possibility of rites of passage playing a role in the burial of the infants and their status in society is examined, as well as some broader notions of socio-economic organization and status at Málthi and Ayios Stephanos and other similar contemporary sites. Finally, some concluding remarks on the finds in this thesis are made.

This thesis examines material from MH III–LH II, which is the time when Greek mainland societies undergo many transformations. It has been described as a period of significant change and innovation, which is what ultimately leads into the radically different social organization outlined earlier.⁸⁰ These transformations did not happen at one specific point in time – rather, they are the result of continuous change over the scope of this time period.⁸¹ The changes are perhaps most visible in the changes in burial customs. While Middle Helladic graves are most often single graves that were used once, during MH III–LH II, larger collective tombs with multiple inhumations were beginning to be built.⁸² Not just the architectural elements of burials were elaborated, but the entire funerary process: grave goods became more common and certainly more precious, and there is more evidence of more complex funerary ceremonies and rituals.⁸³ In addition, a trend of turning parts of the settled area into a (sometimes intramural) cemetery can be seen.⁸⁴

Typically, the larger and more elaborate extramural tombs found from the Middle Helladic and early Mycenaean period are tumulus and tholos tombs.⁸⁵ In the Peloponnese, where examples have been found already from the earlier half of the Middle Helladic, there does not appear to be any strong relationships between extramural and intramural burial – sites with extramural tombs generally do not have many intramural burials as well.⁸⁶ Early extramural burials of the early Mycenaean period are frequently found near the settlements, but they are gradually found further away from the settlements with time.⁸⁷ At Málthi and Ayios Stephanos, no extramural burials have been discovered (except for the single extramural adult grave at Málthi⁸⁸), which correlates with the pattern of settlements generally practicing mostly either intramural or extramural burial. However, this also means that we cannot know what any extramural burials of infants might look like. While some examples of contemporary extramural infant burials have been found at other sites, they are few and thus difficult to make any viable comparisons with.⁸⁹

80 Boyd 2002, 4; Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 33–34; Maran & Wright 2020, 102; Milka 2019, 18; Papadimitriou 2016, 335; Voutsaki 2010, 101; Wiersma 2014, 5–12.

81 Boyd 2002, 4.

82 Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 41 & 124–125; Papadimitriou 2016, 335.

83 Milka 2019, 18; Wiersma 2014, 12.

84 Milka 2019, 583–584; Wiersma 2014, 5.

85 Cavanagh 2008, 328–330.

86 Papadimitriou 2016, 338; Zavadil 2021, 284–285.

87 Voutsaki, Hachtmann & Moutafi 2021, 327.

88 Boyd 2002, 34.

89 Kostanti 2017, 110.

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5.1. Rites of passage and the status of children

While a child’s maturity is affected by many factors, including genetic and environmental ones, the maturity of an individual is decided by society.⁹⁰ Anthropological concepts of rites of passage – rituals that all individuals in a society go through in order to attain a certain status – can and have by some scholars been suggested as a possible deciding factor on how children in Greek prehistoric societies were buried.⁹¹ Whereas there are many possible rites of passage for infants, many are related to the physical development of the child, such as the cutting of the umbilical cord, the appearance of the first teeth, the first meal or the first walk.⁹² Rites of passage are often connected to the individual receiving a higher level of equality in comparison to others, but also to having more responsibilities.⁹³ This can be related to the previous discussions on the possible domestic responsibilities of children (see chapter 4.1): if the infants studied here were too young to hold any responsibilities within the household, they were perhaps also too young to have gone through the first rite(s) of passage. Having died before reaching any significant ‘milestones’ of social status and obtaining any responsibilities within the community, these infants might have been essentially without any social identity of their own. If burial within a communal burial space (such as the cemeteries that started to appear at the end of the Middle Helladic period) required a connection to the social group, that lack of personal social identity could have meant that burial with the community was not a possibility for the infants. Intramural burial, then, would likely have been a plausible choice for burial.

The concept of functional age may also be important here. In some societies, the development of language skills is an important criterion for the acquisition of social identity; in others, the shift is defined by obtaining the ability to walk.⁹⁴ Most of the infants studied in this material were much too young to do anything particularly independently, and this might have resulted in their lack of personal social identity. Malcolm Lillie, studying children in the archaeological record of hunter-fisher-gatherers of Mesolithic and Neolithic Ukraine, notes that due to the many resources available to prehistoric peoples of the region, children were likely able to participate in subsistence tasks from a fairly low age. This might consequently have enabled children to acquire their own social persona from a younger age than in some other prehistoric societies, which Lillie argues is an important reason for why fewer children received differential burial there than in other contemporary societies and cultures.⁹⁵

Halcrow and Tayles have attributed some of the lacking interest in studying children archaeologically to modern Western notions of children as passive, dependent and unimportant to economic and political life.⁹⁶ This is relevant, not only in our own interpretations of the past, but also if they were to some extent shared with the people of the past as well. Similar views of children as unimportant or perhaps unqualified for participation in some aspects of society, such as socio-economic structures, could function as a reasoning for not burying children in shared cemeteries. This would then not only be based on an infant not having gone through rites of passage as described above, but perhaps also because they simply had not done enough in their lifetime to be considered worthy of the typical burial for a member of the community. As social status clearly becomes increasingly important in burial practices during the Early Mycenaean period, such a view would likely only reinforce ideas about burying infants separately. How categorically such practices would appear is certainly difficult to know – just like many of the changing attitudes to funerary practices during that time, it would probably have been a process emerging over time.

As was noted in chapter 3.1, cist tombs were somewhat more common amongst the older

91 Ingvarsson-Sundström 2003, 169–170; McGeorge 2011, 11; Mishina 2008, 145.

92 McGeorge 2011, 11.

93 Ingvarsson-Sundström 2003, 169–170.

94 Sofaer 2011, 297.

95 Lillie 2008, 40–41.

Department of Archaeology and Ancient History

Infants of the Aegean Bronze Age

A study of intramural infant burials in their social context Sofia Sunnervik

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction

1.2. Aim and research questions

1.3. Theoretical approach

1.4. Methodology and material

2. Previous research

3. The intramural graves

3.1. The graves

3.2. The spatial context of the graves

3.3. Osteological information

4. The social context of intramural infant burials

4.1. Kinship and the domestic household

4.2. Emotions and religious beliefs

5. The societal context of intramural infant burials

5.1. Rites of passage and the status of children